Final Echoes
by ChaserGrey
Summary: Disconnected scenes from an epilogue to "Breaking Strain" that never got off the ground. If you didn't read that story, you don't care about this. Trust me. Maybe more later, if other scenes keep hammering at my head.


_A/N: As I mentioned (somewhere), I had an epilogue I was working on for Breaking Strain. It ended up being a bunch of disconnected scenes that didn't hang together. Now several of them are just hammering at my head demanding to be let out...so I'm releasing them, and there you go. Fair warning: this is pretty mawkish, probably nonsensical unless you've read "Proof Through the Night" and "Breaking Strain", and might make you scream "Who gives a s*** about your dead character anyway?". As always- you have been warned. More may be coming. Can't say._

_November 26, 1964 2217 Hours_

_Deck 2, USS_ Reprisal

Captain Jaime Guitierrez couldn't put off what he had to do any longer. The last of the rag-tag flotilla that had threatened to swarm Madagascar was gone- sunk at sea, destroyed after landing by Draka army troops, or gone back to Zanzibar to vent their frustrations on the Sultan, who had managed to switch sides late enough in this game to piss off everybody. Bohner's coup had begun to die as soon as _Spirit of Rio_/'s fuel-air bombs detonated over the valley, and it looked like von Shrakenberg's position was secure for now. Even the Jap POWs from _Yarrow_ were gone, loaded onto a cruiser for a slow and public repatriation via Venta Bellagrium. Word from the last hourly intel wire was that the purges had already started back in Tokyo.

The final flight of A2H Vampires had landed an hour ago after seeing the last boats back into Zanzibar Harbor. Flight quarters were secure. After three days of nonstop operations, the ship was finally quiet. And so here he was, the passkey he'd gotten from the berthing office clenched in one hand, trying to think of a reason not to open the door.

The key slid in easily, turning smoothly in the lock. The door opened. Guitierrez went in. The door closed behind him.

As one of the very few full-bird Captains on board _Reprisal_, Julius Aurelius Rosemont had rated his own stateroom. The bunk that took up the far wall was neatly made up, hospital corners tucked in tight enough that even a Marine DI would have to nod grudging approval. The classified material safe was neatly shut and the clothing drawers were neatly secured into one of the stateroom's walls. But there were still traces of the man. There was a cheap paperback tossed onto the bunk- The Cards Said Murder, a Harrison Cusk Mystery- with a crumpled wardroom menu serving as a bookmark. A claim slip from the ship's laundry that Guitierrez would have to take down. The gold-framed reading glasses he thought he was keeping a secret from everybody, sitting on the room's small writing desk. A logbook was still open next to them, the last scrawled entry describing a photo run over Trismestigus Province days and a lifetime ago. Guitierrez remembered a night long ago at a Hong Kong club, drunk on surprisingly good beer and smoking a damn fine cigar, when Rosie had mentioned he always pulled out his logbook before he left on a flight. _That way_, he'd said in the slow Ozarks drawl that came out on the rare occasions the man could let his guard down, _I know I'm comin' back to finish the entry. Simple as that._

Well, this time it wouldn't be. Most of him was still working on that. He had a feeling it would be a while coming.

There was a gilt-framed photo frame at the edge of the desk, two images facing each other. One, sepia with age, showed a stiffly poised Ensign with brand-new wings on his uniform, an older man on one side and a woman on the other. Parents. With a start, Guitierrez realized he'd never known their names, only that they'd died sometime before the Eurasian War. Even among friends, Rosemont had never liked to talk about the past, especially from before the War. The other was a faded snapshot, overexposed from the Western sunlight, showing three men in flying gear clustered around a glass-nosed bomber more than twenty years gone. Slightly built Englishmen, Jimmie Walker, dead since 1945. Short, stocky Ken Fujita, who had been in the back seat in 1956 when a student pilot screwed an instrument trainer into the side of a mountain. And a tall, lanky American, now gone to join them. Three days ago the photograph had been living memory. Now it was nothing but dead history.

When he saw that, Guitierrez let his head bow, sinking into the desk chair. And for the first time in days, with his back to the closed stateroom door, he let himself weep for his friend. He'd cleaned out Rosie's locker in the stunned silence of VAH-1's ready room before coming here, and he remembered what had been there. An Annapolis ring. No wedding band. Only the dead staring back at him here in his cabin. Fuck the Medal, fuck all the other ribbons and wings. It just didn't seem fair.

When he reached down to close the logbook, Guitierrez found a white envelope beneath it, with "Jaime" scrawled on the front. Brow lining, he wiped the back of his hand across his eyes and opened it. Inside were two foolscap-sized pieces of Navy stationary with "USS REPRISAL" across the top, covered in a familiar scrawl.

_Jaime-_

_I'm not going to pretend I have some kind of premonition about this thing, because I don't. Chances are you'll never know about this, unless you get me drunk enough next time we pull into Venta B and bust my balls for being sentimental, because you know I don't make takeoffs unless I think I can land afterwards. But I also cover my bases, so consider this my just in case._

_Sorry about sticking you with all my gear. I don't really give a damn what you do with it, just needed somebody to put on the forms. The Navy will probably want to do something with the Medal but otherwise you can deep-six it for all I care. Don't imagine anyone Stateside will give you much grief over it either way. _

_As for the rest, well. You've been a good friend and I'll miss you. But I think we both know I'd look damn funny as a 70 year old pensioner, soaking up the sun with big shades on and watching the hot jets fly overhead, wishing I was up there. Can you picture it? Cause I sure can't. Might have learned in time but no good thinking about it now. So when you get someplace that has liquor, do me a favor and just toast the lucky SOB who got to go out with his boots on, throttle and stick in his hand. I'd rather you be thinking about that than a bunch of stuff that never happened. Deal?  
_

_I'll see you around._

_-Rosie_

_P.S. If Mad Dog made it make sure he gets taken care of. Don't tell him I said this but he's got the makings of a good B/N._

_P.P.S. If you are mad at me for getting shot down then fuck you. It had to be me and you know it._

Guitierrez snorted at that last line, shaking his head and wiping his eyes before laughing softly to himself. Hell. Rosie had won this argument too, the bastard. Who he was...well, that had been enough. Nothing needed to be added to it, and there was no need to carry might have beens.

But Rosemont had been wrong about one thing, too. People- someone- had better damn well care about what happened to what his friend had left behind. Because if they remembered, well. He was willing to call that fair enough.

Guitierrez stood and opened the stateroom door, looking for his yeoman. Have to get a storekeeper in here to do the formal inventory and find some space in one of the ship's holds, then look up an address in the ship's library. He had a letter to get onto the next mail flight, to the Navy Air Museum in Florida.

The neatly folded note, back in its envelope, stayed in his uniform pocket.


End file.
